141. It appears then that it is the subjection of our experience to the form of time which unfits the ideas derived from it for any combination into an idea of God; nor by being ‘joined with an infinity,’ which itself merely means the absence of limit to succession in time, is their unfitness in any way modified. On the contrary, by such conjunction from being latent it becomes patent. In one important passage Locke becomes so far aware of this that, though continuing to ascribe infinite duration to God, he does it under qualifications inconsistent with the very notion of duration. ‘Though we cannot conceive any duration without succession, nor put it together in our thoughts that any being does now exist to-morrow or possess at once more than the present moment of duration; yet we can conceive the eternal duration of the Almighty far different from that of man, or any other finite being: because man comprehends not in his knowledge or power all past and future things ... what is once past he can never recall, and what is yet to come he cannot make present. ... God’s infinite duration being accompanied with infinite knowledge and power, he sees all things past and to come’ (Book II. chap. xv. sec 12). It is clear that in this passage ‘infinite’ changes its meaning; that it is used in one sense--the proper sense according to Locke--when applied to duration, and in some wholly different sense, not a figurative one derived from the former, when applied to knowledge and power; and that the infinite duration of God, as ‘accompanied by infinite power and knowledge,’ is no longer in any intelligible sense duration at all. It is no longer ‘the idea we have of perishing distance,’ derived from our fleeting consciousness in which ‘what is once past can never be recalled,’ but the attribute of a consciousness of which, if it is to be described in terms of time at all, in virtue of its ‘seeing all things past and to come’ at once, it can only be said that it ‘does now exist to-morrow.’ If it be asked, What meaning can we have in speaking of such a consciousness? into what simple ideas can it be resolved when all our ideas are determined by a before and after?--the answer must be, Just as much or as little meaning as we have when, in like contradiction to the successive presentation of ideas, we speak of a self, constituted by consciousness, as identical with itself throughout the years of our life. ... the same sense in which the self is infinite.